Here's the story I had begun, when Kansas led by 3 midway through the first half: "If it comes down to the last-second shot, Kansas is in trouble. This team plays hard, and they like each other, and they're generous to a fault. But there's really nobody on that team, except maybe Mario Chalmers, who has the personality and the skills to both want to take the last shot and to actually hit it."

Funny how things work out.

Also funny how both teams played very well, and according to type. Memphis pressured the ball, drove to the basket, hit the midrange jumper and missed clutch free throws; Kansas aggressively defended the perimeter and pounded the ball inside. There were a few outliers—play that game a hundred times more and Derrick Rose is more of an offensive threat; play it a hundred times more and Kansas shoots better than 3 of 12 threes (though, go figure: before Sherron Collins and Chalmers hit those last two three-pointers, Kansas was shooting 1-10; had Kansas lost, we all would have been point to this as one of the reasons why).

Since we've been numbers geeks here all along, we'd like to point out that the Memphis collapse wasn't all that bad; according to the Bill James lead calculator, a 9 point lead with a little over two minutes left to play is only 32 percent safe. Interestingly, this is the same degree of confidence Kansas had when they were up 40-12 with 27 minutes left to play against North Carolina. Of course, Kansas closed that one out.

There is the free throw issue, of course, and though everyone is going to make a lot of noise about how Calipari shouldn't have dismissed his team's poor shooting so lightly, I'm inclined to agree with those who believe free throws have very little to do with winning. Having a team that shoots a high percentage from the line is nice to have, of course, but it's a far less valuable skill than, say, offensive rebounding, which gets your team the most precious commodity in the game—more possessions. And though the misses were easy to point to as the reason for the Memphis collapse, far more important was allowing Kansas to steal the inbounds pass with under two minutes left to play; Collins hit a 3 that brought the score to 60-56.

But enough rehashing. As they say in Bull Durham, the moment's over, and the first midnight scrimmage is only six months away. The big question facing Bill Self now comes in the form of the Devil Boone Pickens with an offer of, well it's an obscene amount of money, really, to coach Oklahoma State, which just happens to be Self's alma mater. Will Self take it? When Devin asked me that last night, I made a not-very-convincing-even-to-myself argument that Bill Self would never leave the greatest job in college basketball. And there are already plenty of columnists saying he should stay put (thanks, Gene Wojciechowski). Still, I think Devin's right. It's a chance to go home, to a school that does have a pretty good basketball tradition of its own (even though their last title came in, ahem, 1946). And, oh yeah, there's maybe Ten. Million. Dollars. 

So maybe he's gone. And really, with no hard feelings; Self is by all accounts a great guy, and he's run a great program at KU.  Still, what shall it profit a team, if it shall gain the whole world, and lose its own coach? Well, hundreds of thousands in merchandise sales, etc. for one thing. A higher national profile. And, maybe a shot at the next up-and-coming coach. You think Mark Turgeon's available?

And now, in our own personal One Shining Moment, I must thank you both for a very nice three weeks of watching and writing about basketball. And I'm not just saying that because my team won. Truly, this is the most wonderful time of the year, made even better with such smart writers to talk it over with. See you all at Midnight Madness.

It is the conventional wisdom among sports fans that the NCCAA basketball tournament is pretty much the perfect sporting event, with the nation captivated as a true champion is forged through eight rounds. That is especially the case when contrasted with the BCS Championship, which insists that the national football title be decided by one somewhat random matchup conceived by computers. So why is it then that I look forward to the football championship game more than I do tonight's basketball final?

It isn't that I prefer football to basketball. It's more that the football championship game, whatever its flaws--and they are legion--at least represents the emotional pinnacle of the season--even if the game proves, as it has the last two seasons with Ohio State overmatched against SEC champins, to be a disappointment. But the basketball tournament works the other way. "March Madness" is a genuine phenomenen and the pinnacle of tournament excitement is the first week with 48 games in four days and pretty much nobody yet eliminated from his or her pool.

The beauty of that stretch of the tournment is that if the game you are watching stinks, CBS switches you to a better game and then maybe an even better game than that. There don't have to be more than a handful of thrillers or a pair of upsets to convince fans that they have witnessed an exhillarating event. But after that, with fewer games and most of us licking our pool wounds, the tournament rises and falls on the quality of the games. And this year, they have been real stinkers.

Since the great opening week, the average margin of victory in the 14 contests has been almost 15 points per game and only two games--Kansas-Davidson and Xavier-West Virginia--were settled by less than double digits. Satruday's semi-finals were particularly horrid with UCLA seemingly rendered semi--comatose by Memphis' blazing attack and North Carolina playing the worst 15 minutes of tournament ball by a high-level team that I can ever recall. And CBS had nowhere to go. That might not have been the case for the viewers, most of whom, I suspect, missed UNC's gritty comeback which put the team in position to play the worst final 10 minutes of basketball I have ever seen. (Note: My pool pick had a UNC-UCLA final, but so did millions of others and even a reversal of the results wouldn't have been enough to put me in contention.)

There's no reason tonight shouldn't be a terrific game, but then again no particular reason it should. Of the eight NCAA basketball championships contested in the 2000s, only two have been close games--North Carolina 75 Illinois 70 in 2005 and Syracuse 81 Kansas 78 in 2005. I didn't pick either Memphis State or Kansas to reach the Final Four;I decided in my infinite wisdom that Memphis's conference schedule did not adequately prepare it for the tournament grind and that their inability to hit free throws would prove fatal and that Kansas' inexplicable inconsistency--we saw it at the start of the second half against UNC--would cost them too much against a good team.

Now forced to take a mulligan, I go with Memphis, with its rare combination of big and fast and a freshman guard, Derrick Rose, who will make some NBA lottery team very happy next year. My picks is especially good news for my fellow blogger Coatney, a hard-core Jayhawk. I haven't been right about much in this tournament and there's no reason to think that I suddenly got smart now. But here's one bonus pick about which I'm fairly confident: the game won't be any more entertaining--and probably far less memorable--than Western Kentucky-Gonzaga in the first round.

The moment I knew Kansas was going to lose to North Carolina came with around seven minutes left in the first half, right after Kansas had just gone up by 28 points. It was then that Billy Packer said "this game is over," and it was then that Kansas started playing like it was, going into a tailspin of offensive fouls, blown dunks and lazy passes that culminated in Russell Robinson jacking up a 1-on-5 three from the corner while the rest of the Hawks were, I believe, talking over the post-game dinner options down on the other end. It was exactly the kind of ragged, sloppy ball you see at the end of blowout games, and the fact that it came when there was still a whole other half to play was, um, problematic to say the least.

It was also the Kansas season in a nutshell. When the Hawks are good, they're very, very good, as ESPN's Andy Glockner demonstrates with some good numbers analysis here. When they're bad, they're—well, you saw it last night.  Which team will show up Monday night against Memphis? Probably both; when Kansas it at its best the offensively the team works through the post, and Memphis is good enough to disrupt that. On the other hand, Memphis is capable of blowing out teams then letting them back in as well; see, for instance, both the Texas and Michigan State games last week.

 Who will win Monday? I'm following both my heart and the good statisticians at Basketball Prospectus, who both make the case for Kansas.

We'd like to first nod in the direction of the enlightened folks at Basketball Prospectus, children of the Enlightenment all, who have used the razor-sharp tools of Reason and Science to determine that UCLA and Kansas will be winners tonight. And, you know, who are we to argue with the numbers crunchers, especially since they crunch so deliciously for Kansas fans?

Elsewhere things are not so tasty. The consensus at ESPN is for a Memphis-North Carolina final, while Sports Illustrated's experts see UCLA and Carolina as moving on tonight. Hmm.
 

From AP:

Tyler Hansbrough, who topped the Atlantic Coast Conference in scoring and rebounding and led North Carolina to the Final Four, was selected The Associated Press college basketball player of the year Friday.

The 6-foot-9 junior forward averaged 22.8 points, the highest mark by a North Carolina player since 1970, and 10.3 rebounds for the Tar Heels (36-2), who were ranked No. 1 for all but six weeks this season and were the overall top seed for the NCAA tournament.

Hansbrough was presented the award the day before the Tar Heels play Kansas in the second game of the Final Four.

Besides being our day of rest, Sunday is the day of my longstanding pickup basketball game. Which begins at 5 p.m. sharp, which means that I didn't watch the Kansas-Davidson game. Mostly. At least in real time. I saw the last couple of minutes in a bar in around the corner after my game ended, and while I would later watch the whole thing, really, I saw the whole contest right there--the Kansas guards playing tight, Davidson making some plays but going through some offensive dry spells, Stephen Curry hitting some clutch shots but missing more through sheer exhaustion.

Later, after reviewing the tape, my thoughts were pretty much the same: That's a good Davidson team, and very well coached. They successfully doubled the Kansas big guys, and it was a really smart strategy, because what they realized is that while the Kansas bigs are tall, great scorers, strong and hit the boards well, they're not very good passers. Still, I think Davidson would be playing next weekend if they didn't have their own Belmont moment late in the game--they only scored, what, 5 points over the last 7 minutes, because they started to get a little tentative. When they were up 4 midway through the second half, I think they did a little bit of that "Holy crap, we're going to the Final Four" thing, and it cost them. Still, it was a great game, best of this weekend, I'd say, in terms of sheer hustle and desire.

That's because the others were such blowouts. Unlike last year, when Florida was the clear leader, in this year's tournament there were four favorites, at once roughly equal to each other and better than the other teams in the draw. Now they're all in the Final Four, which if nothing else should give us three great games next weekend. I'm already sad that the tournament doesn't include a consolation game anymore. Especially since North Carolina-Memphis would be such a great matchup.

Still, looking ahead, what do you guys think? I'm still not a believer in Memphis; they're talented, and well-coached, but UCLA is better, so I have the Bruins moving on, 68-62 over the Tigers. In the other game...hmm. Everyone says that Carolina's defense is the Achilles Tar Heel, but I'm not so sure. Carolina gives up a lot of points because they play at a fast pace that allows the other team more opportunities to score, sure, but a better metric of a defense is the percentage of opposing possessions that result in scores, and Carolina does better there. And we've all seen throughout this tournament how gifted they are offensively.

Kansas can win, though, by keeping up a constant pressure on the Carolina guards; I think they will wilt by the second half, and the pressure should help keep the ball out of Hansbrough's hands. The Jayhawks have four superior defenders who can guard anybody in the Carolina backcourt, and that should be the difference, with Kansas winning 83-80. I'll wait to talk about the championship game until this weekend, but for now, how do you guys see this playing out?

Charles Euchner files a nice take on what new scholarship rules could mean for Harvard's NCAA tourney chances:

Harvard, Yale and Princeton perennially finish among the top five in rankings of universities for their academic offerings and research. Could they, one day, also compete for the Final Four of the NCAA basketball tournament?

Ivy League colleges have not been serious competitors in major sports since the signing of the Ivy Group Agreement in 1945, which banned the use of athletic scholarships. Harvard and Yale dominated college football in the late 19th and early 20th century but de-emphasized sports in the aftermath of a series of controversies over gridiron violence. (Harvard's invention of the "flying wedge," in which a mob of defensive players targets a single opposing player, led to the creation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.)

But now two Harvard initiatives—a dramatic restructuring of tuition assistance and aggressive recruitment of the nation's best high-school basketball players—could spur Harvard and other Ivy League schools to produce basketball teams worthy of March Madness. Basketball is likely to see the greatest change from these new rules, since one good player can significantly improve the fortunes of the team; see, for instance, the career of Bill Bradley, who led Princeton to the Final Four in 1965. Because of the volume of elite athletes needed, the initiatives are less likely to impact sports such as football or baseball.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Devin, one immediate thought is, and I'm probably going to regret this, but--bring on Davidson. Kansas has lots of experience handling phenomenonally talented scorers (See: Durant, Kevin, who put up 37 in his last game against Kansas, an 88-84 loss); they'll let Curry get his 40, get out and run and win 90-80.

And now I've officially bumped my team out of the tournament.

But to me Wisconsin poses more of a challenge, because they're kind of the Hillary Clinton of the tournament: They don't give up, and they'll do whatever it takes to win. Teams like that bother Kansas, because, while the Hawks are very good, they don't impose their style of play on others--instead, they take whatever style of play is being dictated by the other team and then win playing that game. This usually works, but Wisconsin defends like nobody else in this tournament except, maybe, UCLA, and the team seems particularly good at making the contest into an ugly, close game--and that's exactly the kind of game Kansas could lose.

Also, Starr, though I loved your story about your friend and the bottle of wine (and I'm going to use that same line the next time I'm in a similar situation), everybody knows that the proper response to the men from Madison is "Badgers? We don't need no stinkin' Badgers."

That gag's been cracking me up since 6th grade.

But enough of this wishy-washy analysis based upon nothing but emotion, friendship, and, in my case, too much late night ESPN. Let's look at some cold hard statistical numbers-crunching, especially because they crunch so deliciously for KU. Ken Pomeroy breaks down the Sweet 16 on Basketball Prospectus and finds that that team with the best chance to win it all now is....your Kansas Jayhawks. His take, based on his formula to determine how well each team is playing at the moment, as expressed as each team's percentage chance to move on to the next round:

                     Elite8 Final4 Final  Champ
 1MW Kansas          93.2   64.5   48.5  33.8
 1W  UCLA            92.1   71.3   46.2  22.9
 3MW Wisconsin       82.7   32.0   19.9  11.1
 1S  Memphis         69.2   44.2   22.9   9.8
 1E  North Carolina  56.5   34.3   12.2   6.0
 3E  Louisville      60.5   27.9    8.3   3.6
 4E  Washington St.  43.5   23.7    7.1   3.1
 2S  Texas           50.7   21.6    8.4   2.6
 3S  Stanford        49.3   20.6    7.9   2.4
 3W  Xavier          51.7   14.2    5.2   1.3
 5S  Michigan St.    30.8   13.6    4.6   1.2
 2E  Tennessee       39.5   14.2    3.1   1.0
 7W  West Virginia   48.3   12.7    4.5   1.0
10MW Davidson        17.3    2.3    0.6   0.1
12MW Villanova        6.8    1.1    0.2   0.03
12W  W. Kentucky      7.9    1.8    0.3   0.02

See? The smart money says Kansas, and that's good enough for me. In fact, why don't we just bow to statistical inevitability now, and save us all the trouble...

• Stanford: I went to grad school there and, while I never went to a single basketball game, Stanford gave me my first taste of big-time college sports, namely football. The young among you are probably laughing, but once upon a time that was not an absurd statement. My stint coincided with the Jim Plunkett era (Plunkett would go to the Patriots as the #1 pick in the 1970 draft and later win a Super Bowl with the Raiders). Stanford won back-to-back Rose Bowls, one with Plunkett and another with Don Bunce at quarterback, over #1-ranked, undefeated and, as usual, overrated Big Ten teams, Ohio State and Michigan respectively.
• Michigan State: They were my Final Four sleeper and, if you can't win your pool, nothing impresses like picking the outsider in the Final Four.
• Villanova: More than 20 years later, my hat is still off to Villanova for the great upset over Patrick Ewing and Georgetown for the 1985 basketball championship. My favorite player on that team was Ed Pinckney, a great college player and a serviceable pro who lasted a dozen seasons in the NBA and averaged more than 12 points a game for his career. His sister, Cheryl, used to work in the photography department at Newsweek and was a lovely lady.
• Davidson: It isn't just that I am charmed by Stephen Curry, though you got to love a guy who can drill it from downtown and still stops to kiss his mom on his way onto the court after halftime. But I actually remember the great Lefty Driesell teams of the '60s there and, for reasons that I can't remotely recall, became a big fan of the school's biggest star, Fred Hetzel. That won't trigger a lot of memories, but he was a two-time All-American and the first pick overall in the '65 NBA draft. He only lasted seven seasons in the NBA, but he averaged 18.9 points and 9.9 rebounds a game with the pros, numbers that would earn him an eight-figure salary today.
• Wisconsin: So many of my friends went to Wisconsin in the '60s (and my brother-in-law went there later) that I have always had great affection for Madison and the Badgers. Besides, almost 30 years ago I had a memorable dinner at a restaurant called Ovens of Brittany. My dining companion ordered a German white that he didn't really like. I asked him if he wanted to send it back. He said, 'No, let's just drink it fast and try a different one." RIP Sean Toolan, killed covering Beirut in 1981.
• Memphis: I know John Calipari is a little too slick (OK, a lot too slick), but his UMass teams were some of my favorites ever. I owe him something for the great entertainment.
• Washington State: I was doing a story on decathlete Dan O'Brien who lived in Moscow, Idaho, but did his training for field events across the border on the Cougars campus. On a dank, drizzly, chilled afternoon, O'Brien tossed discuses while I gathered them and skittered them back (throwing them more than 20 feet was beyond my capability). Had I not been there, O'Brien, later an Olympic gold medallist, would have been fetching his own. I learned a lot that afternoon about just what it takes to attain greatness.
• Louisville: Two of my favorite all-time players--Darrell Griffith and Wes Unseld. And I've got a soft spot for the Big East.
• Tennessee: Once there were immortals like Red Auerbach and Red Holtzman, but the Jewish basketball coach is now a dying breed. I give you Bruce Pearl.

So in my first post for this NCAA tournament blog, I confessed to being a bracketology bonehead--no matter how closely I follow college hoops, I never win bracket pools, never even come close--and in case you thought I was being falsely modest, I am proud to report that I am currently in last place in Newsweek's 15-person pool. Actually, let me be more specific: I'm in distant last place. There's almost as much daylight between me and 14th place as there is between 14th and 1st. Oy. I've already lost my national title pick (thanks, Georgetown) and another Final Four pick (thanks, Pittsburgh... actually, thanks to the entire Big East for your support). At this point, my prediction that I'll nail 1.6 of the Final Four teams is looking spot-on, assuming one of my safe, remaining choices (top seeds North Carolina and UCLA) survives the second weekend. Give me some credit: yes, I'm always wrong with my tourney picks--but at least I was right about how wrong I'd be.

With that in mind, shall we turn to the Sweet 16? It could just be the wounds I'm nursing from Duke's early exit, but the two games in the West region are the only ones that don't really get my motor going. I think UCLA--given time to rest some nagging injuries--will put its sluggish tourney start in the rearview mirror and roll past a Western Kentucky team that probably should've lost in the first round to Drake. I'm similarly uninspired by Xavier-West Virginia, which should be a nice contest between two solid, well-coached teams, but if I had to bet my house on which Sweet 16 match-up is the least likely to feature the future national champion, this is the one I'd pick.